Tom Lee, chairman of BitMine Immersion Technologies, said Ethereum (ETH) should top $5,000 by year-end, a call that requires the token to roughly double from about $2,500.
Key Points:
- Lee said Ethereum should pass $5,000 before 2026 ends and could trade near $7,500 if Bitcoin reaches $100,000.
- The token held near $2,500 on Sunday, below its record of about $4,950 from August 2025.
- Traders reportedly put the odds of a $5,000 Ethereum this year at about 4%.
Lee's Ethereum Call
Lee, who is also co-founder and head of research at Fundstrat, said in an interview in Singapore last week that the token should pass $5,000 before 2026 ends. He tied the forecast to Bitcoin (BTC), saying Ethereum should trade near $7,500 if the larger coin climbs to $100,000.
Over the full cycle, he added, Ethereum "could easily be 25,000 or 50,000 per token," and investors should expect "some monster moves in crypto prices."
Ethereum held near $2,500 on Sunday, down from about $2,700 at the start of October, while Bitcoin traded above $83,000. Reaching $5,000 would also carry the token past its record of about $4,950, set in August 2025.
Traders are not convinced. They reportedly assign about a 4% probability to Ethereum reaching $5,000 by the end of 2026, close to the odds Polymarket bettors gave in late July. That leaves Lee's forecast far outside market pricing, with fewer than three months left in the year.
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Ethereum Breakout Case
Lee sees it differently. He called the token "massively undervalued" and pointed to about five years of trading in the same range, arguing that a longer base produces a bigger breakout.
This cycle should outrun earlier ones, he said, because institutions are building products on blockchains, while past rallies ran on retail money. Investors "aren't bullish enough," he added. Lee has a stake in that view, since BitMine is the largest corporate holder of Ethereum, with about 6 million tokens, or 4.9% of supply, as of late September.
Analyst Ali Martinez flagged a possible Adam and Eve bottoming pattern on Ethereum's 10-minute chart, saying a sustained close above $2,520 could open a path toward $2,640, a gain of under 5%. A U.S. consumer inflation report due in the coming week could also sway rate expectations and trading across major tokens.
The $5,000 target is not new for Lee, who has repeated it publicly since at least July, when Ethereum traded near $2,000. On Sept. 30, with Ethereum near $2,670, he called a $10,000 year-end forecast from BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes conservative, though he said he was unsure the token would get there by December. Earlier calls missed: Lee forecast $10,000 to $12,000 by the end of 2025, then predicted $7,000 to $9,000 by the end of January.
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